FREE STUDY ABROAD TUTORIAL - DECONSTRUCTING YOUR CANDIDACY

Dear Future Global Citizens,

I hope you are doing great. So for those that follow my content across all social media platforms, you would have heard me talk about how competitive admissions and scholarships could be. This is the truth. It is that simple.

But the fact that admission and scholarships are competitive should not scare us, in fact it should motivate us to rise to the competition. This is what I talk about in my first secret of study abroad success in the Free Study Abroad Training. Let me summarize it here:

Graduate school admission and scholarships are very competitive. In order to succeed in this competition, you must package your application by highlighting the strong aspects of your candidacy and improving the weaker aspects.

So many have asked what I really mean as it appears like I am speaking a foreign language. I will start by breaking down what candidacy really means:

Your candidacy is pretty much the aspect of your application that is used to rank you against other candidates for admission and scholarship opportunities. There are two aspects of your candidacy which are: Unchangeable and Changeable:

The unchangeable are the aspects you cannot change e.g your CGPA, Grade Class (e.g Upper Second Class), Course of Study

The changeable are the aspects you can change e.g Leadership Experience, Volunteer Experience, Taking a standardized Test, Relevant Work Experience, Teaching Experience, Taking Relevant Online Courses, Research Experience, getting an additional enhancing degree like a Post Graduate Diploma or Masters in your home country first.

So how do you perform application packaging?

You focus on improving the changeable. It is that simple.

A lot of people come into my DMs bothered about their CGPA, that they graduated with a lower second class. And my response is usually as follows,

“Focus on the changeable! You have enough to work with in order to strengthen your candidacy. You cannot change your grade now!”

So here are some tips for enhancing your changeable:

Leadership Experience? Look for opportunities in your place of work or your local community to lead an initiative or cause that you are passionate about. Leadership essentially means persuading a group of people to achieve a certain cause.

Teaching Experience? How about you teach what you know as you navigate through your course of best fit? You have linkedin and twitter. Share your knowledge there for the benefit of your followers in the form of blogs and posts.

Relevant Online Courses? There are loads of these on Edx and Coursera.

Lastly, you might have to take the damn standardized test. Even if it is not asked for, it does help a great deal in differentiating you from the crowd.

So that’s it.

See you tomorrow when we dive deeply into the behind the scenes of an inspiring testimonial.